Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, has been in London, with a photo-op next to Gordon Brown, his British opposite number, on the steps of Downing Street. The ceremony, the courtesy, goes with the job. In return, Erdogan did something extraordinary. He threatened to expel 100,000 Armenians from Turkey. “They are not my citizens. I am not obliged to keep them in my country.” My citizens? My country? Mass expulsion? This is the mind-set and the language of a dictator.

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In the context, the threat of expelling 100,000 people is less a hang-over from the past than evidence of the kind of world already taking shape.